Penn Jillette
Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality. Morality is not bribery or threats. Religion is bribery and threats. Humans have morality. We don't need religion.Collection: Hope
People still seem to think that they should vote themselves money. They seem to think there is stuff which they think is the government's job, when it's really the individual's job.Collection: Government
I believe the fast track to atheism is reading the Bible. I've read it three times all the way through. It's a big part of our culture, a big part of our history. I don't just read things I agree with.Collection: History
Religion cannot and should not be replaced by atheism. Religion needs to go away and not be replaced by anything. Atheism is not a religion. It's the absence of religion, and that's a wonderful thing.Collection: Religion
Bacon is so good by itself that to put it in any other food is an admission of failure. You're basically saying, 'I can't make this other food taste good, so I'll throw in bacon.'Collection: Food
Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.Collection: Respect
Whereas you have someone like Houdini, who works really, really hard to get really, really famous, and then has actual intellectual ideas that he puts into the culture that stay there.Collection: Famous
My body really, really wanted to reproduce when I was 15. It took a lot of civilization, socialization, willpower and some emulsion polymerization technology for me not to reproduce at 15.Collection: Technology
Freedom means the freedom to be stupid, and that's what I want.Collection: Freedom
The highest ideals are human intelligence, creativity and love. Respect these above all.Collection: Respect
It's amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people yourself is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral, self-righteous, bullying laziness.Collection: Amazing
If you like the stuff I do, my chances of liking you go up.Collection: Chance
I have a very specific definition of censorship. Censorship must be done by the government or it's not censorship.Collection: Government
The Tea Party claims to want small government.Collection: Government
I didn't learn fire-eating to conquer my fears. I learned fire-eating because I desperately wanted to be in show business.Collection: Business
I'm a hardcore libertarian - I want everything legal - but I also believe that you have the right to free association.Collection: Legal
Computers absolutely changed my life. Before I had a computer, I had never written one thing. Not one thing. I'm a very bad speller and I was embarrassed by that. When I would type, the little mistakes would make me nutty, and I would never edit anything.Collection: Computers
My love of computers, besides being practical, is very direct and visceral. I love the way things look on the screen.Collection: Computers
My tolerance for crazy people is, I think, high a tolerance as you're ever going to find. I love being around David Allen Coe. I would have loved to hang out with Tiny Tim. I can listen to Sun Ra on a tape-recording rant.
The only secret of magic is that I'm willing to work harder on it than you think it's worth.
When you look at the actual numbers, the number of people who died after 9/11 was greater than the number of people who died in 9/11, even if you are talking Americans. But you know, I don't like to talk Americans. I want to talk everybody. More innocent people died after 9/11 because of 9/11 than died in 9/11.
One of the things that Teller and I are obsessed with, one of the reasons that we're in magic, is the difference between fantasy and reality.
I'm an amazing mama's boy.
I'm a big fan of gospel music, and you cannot be a fan of rock and roll, you cannot be a fan of country western music, and you can't really be a fan of jazz without listening to a lot of music that's religious.
When you're watching Psycho, there' s that moment when you have a visceral reaction to watching someone being stabbed. And then you have the intellectual revelation that you're not, and that's where the celebration comes in.
I love when violent, dangerous art is done by people who are not violent and dangerous. I love that when George Romero was making 'Dawn of the Dead,' he was coaching his son's little league team.
If I had to imagine omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent power in the universe that chose to make my mother suffer, I don't know how I would make that make sense in the universe.
I've never revved my car at a light for an attractive woman or an auto-rival, not even as a joke.
I've never had a drink of alcohol or any drug in my life.
'Moxie' is a name that was created by an American for the first national soft drink and then went on to mean chutzpah, and that's nice.
My whole family is missing that sports gene. I hope I didn't screw that up by marrying a great golfer.
In my private life, I'm not around any drugs or alcohol.
Penn & Teller don't know jack about global warming.
I am a huge fan of proselytizing. I am a huge fan of speaking your mind. The only way we can share the universe... is by talking very strongly about what we believe.
I think voting for the lesser of two evils in game theory always leads to more evil.
Poker has the feeling of a sport, but you don't have to do push-ups.
The first thing I said to myself on 9/11 was, 'There go our civil rights.' I found out by comparing notes later that George Carlin and I both said that at the exact same time. That's the first thing that popped into our head.
I have no evidence that libertarianism leads to a better life. I just think it is morally right.
I'm totally clean and sober my whole life.
If you want to talk about magic, the stuff that blows me away is the stuff that's done close up.
When 9/11 hit, the second thing I said to myself was, 'This really is what religious people do.' Those people flying the plane were very good, very pious, truly faithful believers. There's no other way to paint them. Of course, they are extremists by definition, but they certainly aren't going against Islam in any real way.
I don't think I'm made of the right stuff to be a politician. I think I'm made to be a loose cannon.
The vast majority of people who have mental illness problems never hurt anybody.
The medium is not the message - the message is the message.
Asking someone else to do something immoral is immoral.
The First Amendment says nothing about your getting paid for saying anything. It just says you can say it. I don't believe that if a corporation pulls all the money out of you or a network pulls their money away or you get fired, you're being censored.
I don't want people who are in poverty, in pain, or suffering, to suffer because it's for their own good and they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I want to help them. I want us all to help them.
There is this tremendous amount of arrogance and hubris, where somebody can look at something for five minutes and dismiss it. Whether you talk about gaming or 20th century classical music, you can't do it in five minutes. You can't listen to 'The Rite of Spring' once and understand what Stravinsky was all about.
If you don't pay your taxes and you don't answer the warrant and you don't go to court, eventually someone will pull a gun. Eventually someone with a gun will show up. I want everything the government does to be done, I just want it to be done voluntarily.
I will not counter the insanity of the PATRIOT Act with an overblown fear of my rights being taken away.